Best CPU for gaming?

I'm more partial to Intel. I've used many Intel processors over the years and had great success with most of them. I currently have the i7-7700k on my desktop and the laptop variant i7-7700hq on my laptop, and they work extremely well. I use them both for gaming, VR gaming, programming, running VM's... basically anything andeverything I want. If you have the money to spend on the i7, I would recommend it. It will last many years. I still have an i7-5820k on the first PC that I built by handthat is still running as well as the day I installed it. It's now 2+ years old at this point.

However like other users have said, when it comes to gaming, the GPU does a large portion of the work. So if you have a budget, spend more money on your GPU than your CPU.